


Scheming

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Femslash February Trope Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 16:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3297191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye and Jemma need a little push in the right direction, and Fitz has a plan to provide that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scheming

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill the second square on my Femslash February Trope Bingo card, 'friends to lovers.'

“Would you care to tell me what we’re doing in an empty classroom at midnight?” Jemma whispers. She’d been in her robe, in bed, doing a little bit of reading before turning out the lights, when Fitz dragged her here. She had to argue with him before he let her put on shoes. Really Skye, their other roommate, was a much better candidate for midnight adventures.

Needless to day, Jemma was not a happy camper. She had class in eight hours; she needed full night’s rest.

“I wanted to use the whiteboard,” Fitz explains, pulling black, blue, green, and red dry-erase markers out of his bag.

Jemma sighs. If he’s this well prepared, then he probably plans on being here for a while.

“I’m so glad we left our comfortable apartment to sneak into the chem building in the middle of the night, just so you could use the white board,” she snaps. “Finals don’t even start for another week, this could have waited.”

“Good point,” Fitz ignores her outburst and approaches the whiteboard with the black marker. He stretches his arm as far upwards as he can, and writes in bold letters ‘Operation JitSwS.’ “Which is why we need to get started.”

“Get started with what?” Jemma asks. She’s never heard of an Operation JitSwS and all of her and Fitz’s ongoing projects have been packed up for their move to Boston for grad school.

“I’m glad you asked,” Fitz continues ignoring her tone. “Operation Jemma in the Sky with Skye.” He doesn’t bother to write this down.

Under most circumstances, Jemma would have to stifle a laugh at the name. Fitz loves naming things, from paper to experiments to their impressive inventions. He also happens to be terrible at it.

In this case, however, Jemma’s too distracted by what she guesses Fitz is planning.

“Oh Fitz,” she rolls her eyes, “I thought we’d been over this.”

“We have,” he says. “Skye’s a serial monogamist, you’re too busy for a relationship, your friendship is too important to risk post-coital awkwardness.”

Each of these reasons gets written on the board in Fitz’s cramped handwriting.

“All completely valid reasons,” Jemma reminds him.

“All well thought-out excuses,” Fitz counters. ‘We have 18 days until graduation, at which point you and I head off to Boston, and Skye begins her journey to parts unknown. Wouldn’t it be nice if you laid all your cards out on the table before then?”

“No,” Jemma says bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. “At best it would force at least one of us to alter our carefully laid plans, which I refuse to do or force her to do. And at worst it would destroy our friendship.”

“I think you’re full of shit,” Fitz tells her, his first trace of frustration over her attitude tonight.

Jemma gasps. It’s not that she’s never heard Fitz curse before, their work is stressful enough that she’s used to it. It’s just not normally directed at her.

She tries changing her approach, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the amount of effort you’ve clearly put into this. But I’ve already made a decision about my feelings for Skye, and that decision is to silently wait it out.”

“It’s been four years, Jemma,” Fitz sounds exasperated. “Are you going to wait it out until you’re old and gray and surrounded by fifty cats who will eat your corpse when you die?”

“If that’s what it takes,” she practically yells, belatedly hoping there isn’t any cleaning staff in the hallway to hear her. Then she storms out of the room, out of the building, to her car. The buses are still running; Fitz will have to get home that way. She’s too angry to wait for him; she doesn’t want to hear anything else he has to say.

\--

Jemma pretends not to notice that Fitz is conspicuously absent from the apartment for the next week or so. She knows there’s no way he wants to spend that much time watching football with Lance, so it’s definitely a ploy to get her alone with Skye.

And it works, kind of. Jemma and Skye do spend more time together. But Jemma’s long since learned to deal with her racing pulse and the butterflies she gets in her stomach when Skye’s around.

She’s learned to remind herself that the innuendos Skye makes aren’t anything special, she talks like that with everyone. And Skye’s a naturally touchy-feely person.

They eat dinner together, watch movies together. They have a particularly interesting Friday night margarita party for two, in which Jemma has to convince Skye that all her clothes should stay on her body, even if no one else is around but Jemma.

She goes to bed that night entertaining thoughts of what might have happened if she had less self-control.

Jemma’s actually surprised when Fitz is home for dinner the Wednesday of finals week, a half-cheese/half-pineapple pizza in hand.

“How’s your week been?” she asks, eyes full of mischief.

“Uneventful,” she responds.

His face falls. “Seriously? Even after I left that bottle of tequila lying around?”

Jemma’s about to rip him a new one over his part in margarita night when Skye walks into the kitchen.

“Long time no see,” she greets Fitz, oblivious to the tension between him and Jemma. “Tell me you got pineapple.”

Fitz makes a look a disgust, which she takes as a confirmation. She grabs the pizza box from his hands and sets it down on the kitchen table. Then she grabs a slide and takes a huge bite, forgoing a plate.

“Mmm… brain food,” she gives Fitz and Jemma big thumbs up and they join her at the table for their half of the pizza.

\--

Fitz is absent again the next night, claiming that he’s helping Trip study for a final. Of course, he doesn’t realize that Trip already told Jemma he was meeting at the library for a group project for his psychology class, which Fitz is definitely not in.

Jemma is sitting at her desk, in the middle of composing a strongly worded text message when Skye knocks on her bedroom door.

“Fitz is gone again?” she asks when Jemma tells her she can come in.

“Studying with Trip,” Jemma informs her.

“Bobbi said she and Trip were meeting with their psych group tonight.”

Jemma shrugs, “I just know what he told me.”

Skye quietly takes a seat on the edge of Jemma’s bed. She seems lost in thought.

“You know, he’s not very subtle,” she says eventually.

Jemma startles. “What do you mean?” she asks, unable to mask the nervousness in her voice.

“The extreme absence, leaving a bottle of tequila around when he knows I can’t resist the allure of margaritas…” Skye trails off before adding, “the large pile of paper he left lying around detailing his plan to get us together.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jemma lies.

“You’re still a shit liar,” Skye says.

Jemma blushes and focuses on her hands, lying safely in her lap.

“I figure he’s gotta be at the end of his rope by now,” Skye continues. “No one spends an entire week hanging out with Lance Hunter without his sanity slipping a little.”

Jemma forces herself to laugh, but it sounds hollow.

Skye gets up and crosses the room to lean over Jemma. 

“His next step is locking us in one of the underground classrooms together. Why don’t we just put him out of his misery before that,” she suggests.

Then, Skye leans down a little further to press her lips against Jemma’s. Her hands are braced on the arms of Jemma’s chair, so Jemma stand up to give her a more comfortable angle.

Skye’s hands settle on Jemma’s hips as the kiss deepens. Jemma runs her fingers through Skye’s hair.

When they come up for air, the doubt start to build in Jemma’s mind.

“You leave for your trip in a week, and I’m going to Boston right after,” she says, once again unable to look Skye in the eye.

Skye shrugs and smiles, “I hear you don’t start classes until the end of August.”

She does have a point there. She and Fitz were planning to move in early to get a feel for the city before classes kept them busy. But Jemma has plenty of money saved up, a benefit of patenting technology bought by the US military. She could spend a couple of months traveling with Skye and still pay her rent.

“I’ll buy a plane ticket tonight,” she promises, then pulls Skye in for another kiss.


End file.
